At the end of last week I took a look at the different ways in which fans can keep up-to-date with events (on and off court) across various social platforms.  One which particularly took my interest was the IBM powered ‘Social Leaderboard’.

2012 saw the advent of ‘Datatainment’ from Man City’s Richard Ayers and we are seeing more and more visualisation of social media data around sporting events.  There was much talk but little action last year but Tennis Australia and event partner IBM have picked up the mantle at the start of 2013.

It is not 100% new, they ran a similar social leaderboard at last years event with Rafa Nadal, Roger Fereder and Novak Djokevic taking the top 3 places after more than 220,000 tweets were measured.  This year it looks like they have improved upon what they had experimented with the ability to take a deeper dive into the stats and a smoother looking interface.

Not only can you take a look at the overall leaderboard to see who is the top 10 but click on each player to see the graph showing sentiment and total tweets.  You can then look at the full event or the last 24 hours to see how they’re popularity has changed during different times.

This is a great way in which to give fans as little or as much data they want from the event in an easily digestible format.  They have obviously taken on learnings from last years event and used the 11 months imbetween integrating advances in technology to improve it functionality and usefulness.

Not only is it good for fans but commentators and reporters can take this info to help in their roles in covering the Open.  The addition of Twitter statistics and last updates from players on their accounts has become something we have become used to on sports and news programmes.  This is an area and set up I can see working for events and sponsors across a number of properties.

“We’re concentrating more than ever on engaging socially with our fans,” Daniel Lattimer, who works on the digital team for the event, told Mashable in a recent article. “We were the first Grand Slam on Twitter, and engagement has been going up there and on Facebook, so it’s important to provide people with that complement to the actual watching of the tennis during the tournament.”

Concentrating all these new platforms and social networks into one area within the site, the ‘Fan Centre’ is the way in which the organisers are using to create a ‘Social Media hub’ (something we have discussed in length here at UKSN).  Somewhere fans can go to discover different ways in which they can consume content and an aggregator for everything they are doing digitally.

Will we see more of these data driven microsites?  Yes, we definitely will.  Twitter works hard with sports and entertainment brands and events to constantly push the boundaries and integrate Twitter more and more into what they are doing.  We know people use it especially around big events so this is the next step on.

It may be a quiet year for sport – compared to 2012 – but expect to see more innovations coming our way and planning for the World Cup in 2014 very much in mind.  For now lets enjoy this new platform at the Australian Open (come on Andy!) and wonder what is going to come up next in sport and digital.  Something around the Superbowl I have no doubt!

Next week sees the start of the first major tennis event since Andy Murray’s famous win at Flushing Meadows last September.  The Australians have always proved to be very good when it comes to utilising social media for their events and this year looks like they are doing it again.

Here we’re going to be taking a look at what they are doing and also what they are doing to help publicise the initiatives.  They now have multiple channels going including Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, YouTube, Google+ and Foursquare (wow!) as well as having mobile apps for iPhone, Android and iPad.  Community managing all those pages and producing unique content will a tough task for sure.

So lets start at the main hub of activity, the website.  People will be flocking to AustralianOpen.com for results, news and lives scores over the next couple of weeks as Murray, Djokovic, Federer, Williams and Sharapova take to the arena.  The different channels are not too obvious at first glance on the homepage, the main plug being the official hashtag #AusOpen as they look to make conversations trackable in a unifiable way.

The main area for their social activity is the Fan Centre.  Here are explanations and links to all the main hubs of activity.  It’s a simple destination which gives fans access to all the information they could need to follow the competition in different ways.

This is a very new feature and one which will be very interesting to keep an eye on.  Starting on Monday they will be running a leaderboard of all the players in the Open.   Every time you tweet about a player or ‘like’ something written about them on this site, their ranking improves. This gives a great opportunity (and reason) for fans to get behind their favourite player and interact with content about them on the site.  Not sure what software they are using to monitor it and how often the table will be updated.  Will be a separate article on this once it is up and running (and I can find out more info).

Twitter

As well as running an official hashtag, something clubs and events should be doing to help fans, they have two official Twitter accounts; @AustralianOpen and @AOSOS.  The first is the main account which you keep in touch about news and results. The second is more interesting for me as it is a dedicated customer service channel for any event information.  Again is very simple and enables their team to pick out the relevant tweets and reply to them quickly.  Fans can also use the #AOSOS hashtag to get the same service.

Facebook

A more visual approach with pictures of players training, behind-the-scenes imagery and links to videos.  They’ve built up a fanbase of almost 800k since its launch in 2008 and certainly gives a different perspective from other channels of the event.  It is a more unofficial, relaxed look which is less about results and more about personality.

Google+

Slightly different imagery is used here and there is more of a concentration on videos as well.  It can be very hard to come up with a content plan that covers so many different channels whilst giving a unique experience on each.  Many go with regurgitating the same content across all to the greatest ‘reach’.  But at the same time you need to people different reasons for visiting each.  The Australian Open team seem to be doing just that and with 63k+ fans they have a good audience base as well.

Foursquare

This platform has gone a little quite over the last few months as the clamour for geo-location apps appears to have calmed down.  I for one have not used it in a long time now as the benefits to the user have yet to be seen.  At the Aus Open they have identified it as a platform to help people make the most of the event area and be more of a guide.  People do leave tips on there for others to pick up and this could be very useful for those who are there for the day.

Pinterest

A new platform for them and not many followers of the account at the moment (just over 300).  Currently it cover more iconic photographs from last years event and a few archive images as well.  be interesting to see how they use the platform and what benefit they derive from it.  So far it has mainly been fashion brands who have found it good at driving ecommerce sales and Liverpool and AS Roma have been two football clubs to see its potential.

YouTube

With so much video content coming out of the event aYouTube channel is almost a must.  They run Australian Open TV through the website and this does a good job of backing that up.  Already there are highlights of some of the qualifying games which have been running throughout this week and some behind-the-scenes promo videos.  Will be a good page to keep an eye out for if you love your tennis.

Mobile

They are running apps for both iPhone and Android as well as having a mobile enabled website so that fans to keep abreast of the latest happening wherever they are.  As was proved at the London 2012 Olympics, mobile is proving to be the biggest generator of online visits around events.  This will be from people going to the event and also those who are at work or travelling and dont have access to their laptop or PC.

iPad

This could be covered under mobile but I thought it deserved its own section.  Some may see the decision by the organisers just to offer special apps for iPad and not any of the other tablet devices, especially as there are so many options out there nowadays.  The image below gives more information on what they offer.

Conclusion

They are offering fans and commentators access to so much information that few have been left out.  There is a great mix of imagery, video and text.  There is a great variety in the mobile offering and they are testing new platforms as they come out (interesting that still no Tumblr page though – very visual).

They also have the ‘Popcorn Tennis Blog‘ which is a live blog which will be running throughout the event.  Liveblogging has taken off with more conferences and events running them, giving more analysis then you will get from Twitter or Facebook.

Guest Post: Andreas Plastiras, blogger with Snap-Shot Sport and social media analyst.

What a summer of sport it has been for Britain. The Olympics were widely regarded as one of the best in history, and the outstanding performance of Team GB resulted in 65 medals in total (29 of which were gold). Great Britain’s chef de mission, Andy Hunt summed it up perfectly when he told the BBC “This is our greatest performance of our greatest team at the greatest Olympics ever.”

Yet, for me, the greatest British sporting moment of this year arrived just last week, on the Arthur Ashe stadium in New York at approximately 2:00am GMT on Monday 10th September, when Andy Murray outlasted great friend and rival Novak Djokovic to win his maiden Grand Slam title.

I am sure that when Murray ends his career – hopefully with many more Grand Slam titles to his name – he will look back at this summer and regard it as the most pivotal of his career. Indifferent public opinion of the 25 year old Scot changed for the better after a teary conclusion to his match with the great Roger Federer in the Wimbledon final, before winning Olympic Gold by beating the same opponent three weeks later, again at Wimbledon, confirmed his own belief that he could compete at the very top level.

He now has a US Open championship to his name – the first man to achieve this award since Fred Perry – ironically on exactly the same day some 76 years ago. Upon reflecting on his success, I looked at how Murray’s first Slam win had been received on social media, and whether Murray himself had initiated conversations through his own social profiles.

Twitter:

Between September 10th-11th , mentions of Andy Murray’s Twitter profile (@Andy_Murray) or his name alone received 405,210 mentions, 78% of the total mentions (519,908) made from between August 23rd – September 14th. Included in this figure were a number of tweets from highly influential profiles, many of which congratulated Murray on his win.

Mentions were unprovoked considering that the last tweet posted by the man himself via his @Andy_Murray Twitter profile was made on June 9th, and were largely positive (14%) or neutral (82%) in sentiment. There may have been a missed opportunity here for Murray in not tweeting at any stage pre, during or post event to connect with his digital fan base on Twitter.

Whilst he accumulated over 29,000 new followers between the 10th-11th September (total folowers currently stands at 1,242,203), one wonders how much greater this figure could have been should he have been actively tweeting after his win. Perhaps a tweet featuring an image of himself lifting the trophy or expressing his excitement at sharing the moment with his two dogs Maggie May and Rusty? I’m just speculating, but you can be sure that the number of retweets, @Mentions, @Replies and followers on his profile would all have increased significantly further.

Facebook:

In contrast to his inactivity on Twitter, it was a very different story on his Facebook profile. Fourteen public posts related to his Slam win were created in just two days post event, with content varying from sponsor videos, media interview highlights and imagery of him holding the US Open trophy aloft. From the 10th-12th September, the page also accumulated 41,831 page ‘likes’, with the overall total currently standing at 829,099.

In terms of post engagement (likes+fans+shares/fans on the day) the most successful post (121,846 engagement score) featured Murray kissing the trophy. A simple post that did not need a description. The image captured the emotion and importance of the win to Murray and was posted shortly after his victory. There have been nearly 6,000 comments on that specific post, and the vast majority are overwhelmingly positive.

It is clear that Murray’s public perception has improved hugely over the course of the summer, and I believe that there lies an opportunity for him to grow his popularity still further by connecting with fans through his social platforms. He is doing so on Facebook and has done so on Twitter in the past and that is why I was slightly surprised not to see any tweets relating to his summer accomplishments.

Just found this video via Twitter and wanted to share it with you.  It is not only exceptionally funny but shows how a sports brand has managed to tap into one of its athletes personality to bring about a really funny, well executed piece. 

We know all about Novak Djokovic (@DjokerNole) and his famous impersonations and exuberant personality.  What better way then to take this on board and create new material based around the player and his alter-ego’s?!

Anyway, watch this and enjoy.

Novak Djokovic on WhoSay

They are not the first brand to attempt this and wont be the last. But by producing a genuinely funny, sharable video and associating with it is a great way for a brand to use the digital space and change the way people (consumers) perceive it.

I was involved, indirectly, with this video that again delivered something unexpected that had nothing to do with product. It helped link the player and the brand whilst delivering something genuinely funny and interesting.

Carrying on the theme of iPhone apps, after discussing athletes using them to own their own content and push themselves as brands.  This week we’ve got our sun hats on, or should that read umbrellas out, and are armed with strawberries and cream….now fully prepared for the 2 week UK tennis festival that is Wimbledon.

This year sees the third incarnation of the official Wimbledon iPhone app, put together by official technology partner IBM.  It has been slowly building each year with a view to being useful to spectator and armchair fan alike.

The app lets you keep up-to-date with the latest scores, find out news from the championship, listen to commentary through Radio Wimbledon, find out stats about players and, interestingly, see what the players and official twitter accounts are saying.

There is also plenty of video content and pictures from the event that include round-ups of the days action if you missed it on tv.  Useful stuff indeed.

For those of you visiting Wimbledon the app again comes into its own with ground maps, visitor guide, ticket info, seating plans, travel info and security on there to make sure you get to your seat in plenty of time.

There really isn’t much that is going on at the tennis that is not covered, so you can imagine there is a lot packed into that little app. One of the things that makes it most appealing is that it is FREE, so you don’t have to think about your bank balance to be kept informed.

If you’re like me and don’t have an iPhone, dont panic.  There is a mobile web version of the site where you can get all the latest info by visiting m.wimbledon.com – you dont get the video or audio but the key information is still there.

If you can’t watch the tennis on your computer at work, are out for the day with friends or travelling on a train somewhere and you’re a big tennis fan then this is a must have.  Shame there isn’t an iPad version as getting the video highlights on there would be great (though iPlayer can also manage this with the BBC coverage).

Live Streaming has done a lot for the word of sports, whether it be legal or illegal streaming, viewers can watch their favourite games live no matter their location. The demand for streaming of Australian sports is an issue the local market is beginning to face too, and with a couple of the major digital rights deals coming up for renewal soon, live streaming in sport will be a key talking point.

If you were to look to overseas leagues,  I can legally watch MLB on the internet or on my iPhone, as long as I pay up. You can even stream MLB games on your PS3 if you so desire. The AFL dipped its toe slightly into this with their AFL iPhone app, but they only offer video on demand highlights after the game, there’s no live streaming just yet.

Over the weekend Tennis Australia, one of the best sports organisations for social media and digital technology in Australia, streamed live coverage of the Australia v Japan Davis Cup series.  With regular host TV broadcast network Channel Seven not contractually obligated to showing this particular series, they didn’t, so fans flocked to the internet to see their heroes. They offer their own commentators (with some borrowed from Channel 7) and offered round the clock coverage of the matches.

This is not the first time they have used live streaming as a communication channel, they also offered it during the ‘December Showdown‘ which was a playoff for entry into this years Australian Open. It was a week long tournament watched each day by only a few hundred people in person, but a few thousand online, thousands that wouldn’t have been able to watch it otherwise.

The tournament is held only for Australian players, and is a great place for tennis fans to see the up and coming stars of tomorrow that don’t get regular matches on the top-level tour around the world.

Not only are Tennis Australia one of the leaders in giving their fans a great web experience of their sport, they also open up the conversation to the fans. With the recent Facebook Developer news about how Facebook wants to open up the web, the implications for developers are endless, especially for those in sport. Tennis Australia took these changes and ran with them, heavily integrating Facebook into their live stream over the weekend.

Once you logged in to the Facebook chat, your questions weren’t only displayed on the site, but also on your Facebook profile and would also appear on your friends’ news feed.

In down time between points, the commentators regularly answered questions sent in on the Facebook chat. They often mentioned that they wanted questions to come in via Facebook connect, and encouraged dialogue between the stream and the commentators. After noticing the surname of one Facebook user, they asked her “Are you related to a member of our team here today?” And she was! This is another great example of way social media connects sports to their fans, and it’s only going to become more popular.

With the way Facebook is opening itself up to the web (just look at the ‘like’ buttons on this page) and Twitter attempting to go anywhere and everywhere, expect these social media integrations to become the norm